Government of Atlanta

Last updated

Atlanta city seal ATL city emblem.jpg
Atlanta city seal

The city government of Atlanta, Georgia, United States, is a mayor-council system composed of an elected mayor and a 15 member City Council as the legislative body, which has an elected council representative from each of 12 single-member districts and 3 at-large including the City Council President. [1] The mayor is the Executive Officer for the city and serves a four-year term and is limited to two consecutive terms.

Contents

The entire slate is elected for four-year terms in off-year elections (2001, 2005, 2009, etc.).


History

In 1954, Atlanta’s ward system was changed from a bicameral body of councilmen representing Wards and three citywide (at-large) aldermen to a system of six citywide aldermen with a Vice-Mayor who served as the president of the Board of Aldermen. This eliminated the strength of the wards.

In 1973 a new charter was passed which shifted the city to a district system and took effect at the start of 1974. [2] The chief architect of that charter was Grace Towns Hamilton with the purpose to more equitably represent the changing racial composure of the city and coincided with the city's first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson, taking office.

In this reformulation, the Vice-Mayor (and Board of Aldermen president) was changed to the President of the City Council (elected citywide) and 12 districts were drawn represented by one Council member each; in addition there were 6 at-large posts giving a 19-member body. In 1996, the current makeup was enacted which reduced the number of Council members to 16 by reducing the number of at-large posts from six to three. [2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "How Your Council Works". Atlanta City Council. Retrieved December 12, 2025.
  2. 1 2 "Atlanta City Councilman H. Lamar Willis - Post 3 At Large". lamarwillis.com. Archived from the original on February 7, 2006. Retrieved October 12, 2025.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.